


The Maestros of Misuse

by Tierfal



Series: Bending the Rules [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa, Crossover, Fluff, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 16:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ed spends a day with the Improper Use of Magic Office, and no one loses their mind more than a little.</p>
<p>[Vague situational spoilers for '03/CoS.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Maestros of Misuse

**Author's Note:**

> I'm getting a restraining order against this 'verse as soon as I have time. XD I hate how this turned out, but hopefully it will entertain at least a few lovely internet strangers. ♥

At the _abominable_ ringing that hauls him out of the blissful quietude of sleep, Ed buries his face in the pillow and growls his discontentment. The horrible sound stops abruptly, and then there’s a bit of not-too-objectionable rustling to his left, and then there’s a soft mouth pressed to his bare shoulder.

“Good morning, gorgeous,” a low, rumbly voice murmurs into his skin.

“S’no such thing,” Ed says.

“As a good morning?”

“Nnh.”

“Ordinarily, I would agree, but this morning just began with finding you in my bed.”

“S’nice.”

“My bed?”

“Nnh.”

There are clever fingers stroking through his hair. “Unfortunately, we have to leave it now.”

Ed tries to burrow a little deeper into the pillow, but his face is not a particularly good digging tool, and the pillow is not especially amenable to hibernation.

“Don’t you want to investigate a few terribly exciting local abuses of magical ability?” Roy asks, trailing a fingertip slowly down over Ed’s shoulder-blade.

And then Ed remembers what he’s doing here and who he’s with, and his spine starts to tingle right as heat floods his face. It’s a really weird sensation. He’s not sure he likes it, but he wasn’t sure he liked having fingers pressing into his arse, at first, and then that turned out to be pretty fucking mind-blowing, and when Roy did that thing with—

Well. Anyway.

Ed twists until he can peek at Roy in the gap between his own hair and the pillowcase. The whole room is a sort of grayish-dark color; last night’s white sheets look silver. Roy’s always some kind of masterpiece in monochrome, what with the black-hair-black-patch-black-eye-ivory-skin aesthetic he’s got going on, but right now, smiling faintly and melting into the dimness at the edges, he’s downright _staggering_. Ed’s heart was thumping all night long; it caught a break while he was sleeping like the dead, but now it’s taking up the drumbeat again.

“Come on,” Roy purrs at him. “I’ll make breakfast.”

Ed manages to convince one of his hands to move enough to rub his eyes. “…time s’it?”

“An unholy one,” Roy says. “How about eggs and bacon? I don’t think the bread’s molded—toast?”

“S’there coffee?” Ed manages.

“Liters,” Roy says.

Ed resigns himself to wakefulness.

 

 

He’s sort of starting to feel human by the time Roy ushers him into the cozy little office with a “Maestros of Misuse” sticker on the door under the official plaque. There’s a surprisingly welcoming wing-back off to the side of what must be Roy’s desk, judging by the several eons’ accumulated paperwork piled on top—almost immediately after Ed’s curled up in its cushy goodness, Riza comes in.

“Tea, Edward?” she asks, pushing a steaming mug at him before she’s even finished speaking. “Sir, you know the arrangement.”

“Yes, yes, fine,” Roy says, standing between the chair and the desk and sorting through the top few strata of the paperwork mound. “I know it’s here some… aha. Last Friday’s purported Imperius—that was pretty cut and dry, wasn’t it?” Carefully, he extracts a few stapled sheets of paper and crosses the room to flatten them vertically against the wall. “In his defense, it _is_ a bit unusual to have a nice mother-in-law.” He holds a hand out over his shoulder, and Riza excavates a pen to put into his fingers. “Case closed, check; calm restored, check; follow-up, check; Howler, _deemed unnecessary_. Assessed by R. Mustang; witnessed by R. Hawkeye. Here you are, Riza.”

She holds it up against one of the filing cabinets to sign and then slips it into a manila envelope, to the front of which she adds a few more notes. She tucks the whole package under her arm, and _then_ she hands Roy a cup of tea.

There’s a knock at the door, and Jean puts his head in. “Should I tell Hughes you’re here?”

“He already knows,” Roy and Riza say in unison.

Jean chews on his lip. “You sure? I mean, his office is clear on the other si—”

The door swings open, Jean topples in and sprawls on the floor, and Maes Hughes flings his arms out joyously. “ _Roy_! Top of the morning to ya!”

“Quite,” Roy says, sipping his tea with an impressive amount of dignity for a man loitering by the window because his chair is primed with thumbtacks.

“So where is she?” Hughes asks, rubbing his hands together with his eyes shining. “You said you were going to bring her in today! Where’s the charming young thing that’s finally snared the elusive heart of the unfathomable Roy Mustang? Gol _ly_ , she must just be the sweetest little rosebu… oh, hey, Ed.”

Ed’s voice comes out kind of like a squeak, but not actually, because that would be lame. “Hi.”

“How ya doin’?” Hughes asks brightly. “School treating you okay? How’s Al? I’m so sorry I missed your birthday party last week—Gracia’s only got the one brother, you know, and we’d RSVPed for the wedding before I even reali…”

Hughes blinks.

He stares.

He turns, slowly, _painfully_ slowly, to look at Roy.

“Hold the phone,” he says in a low, flat, frigid voice Ed’s never heard from him before.

“Maes,” Roy says.

“You never used any gendered pronouns,” Hughes says.

“It’s—we’ve been—”

“Oh, you son of a _bitch_ ,” Hughes says.

Jean’s cigarette falls limply from his gaping mouth, and even Riza looks faintly startled.

“Maes,” Roy says, more urgently, “listen to m—”

Hughes leaps on him, seizes his lapels, and shakes him _hard_ , and then the mild-mannered Dad of the Year contender draws his right arm back for what Ed’s experience knows is going to be a _brutal_ strike aimed just past the eyepatch—

Riza catches Hughes’s elbow and throws her weight to set him off-balance; when he stumbles, Jean grabs his other shoulder. Hughes’s glasses have slipped halfway down his nose, and there’s blotchy red all through his cheeks, and his eyes are just so— _angry_. It’s not right, not at _all_ , and for Ed to be the _reason_ —

And Roy looks… bereft. Betrayed, bereaved, and Ed’s darting across the room to—to do _something_ , even though he’ll probably make it worse—

When he gets close, he realizes he has no idea what to do, so he just kind of presses his arm to Roy’s and hopes that’s encouraging somehow.

“Maes,” Roy says quietly, voice steady, hands not, “this is not a whim.”

“It was my idea,” Ed blurts out. “I mean—I brought it up. I mean, I practically—begged. I mean—”

“We are going to be,” Roy says, arm rising to settle lightly over Ed’s shoulders, “so very, _very_ careful, because we know what’s at stake. And if it… starts to go wrong, I am going to back away, and I will say over and over that you told me so, but—Maes, for heaven’s sake—please just let us _try_.”

Hughes looks at Roy, looks at Ed, squints at both of them in turn like they’re an equation of two and three adding up to nine, and then relaxes enough that Riza and Jean cautiously release him.

“All right,” he says. “One chance, Roy. _One_ chance, and only because I’m letting myself believe you’re not the instigator. Don’t make me regret this.”

Roy nods slowly.

Hughes sighs, and then he musters a tiny smile. “I guess… if I have to suffer it… you two _are_ kind of cute together.” He takes another deep breath and smiles more broadly, looking like himself again. “And hey, it’s not like you’ve gotten—” He jigs his eyebrows. “— _busy_ or anything, right?”

Ed’s not sure whose expression it is that gives them away. Maybe they’re equally guilty. He hopes that in a couple weeks, when the bruises from trying to beat the ever-loving shit out of Roy and missing and punching the wall have faded, Hughes will forgive them both.

Jean’s talking quickly in a low, soothing voice as he guides a wailing Hughes rapidly out of the office, and when the door swings shut, Roy sags against the filing cabinet.

“What next?” he asks as he heaves himself upright again, the better to cross over and collapse into his chair.

There’s a moment of horrified silence.

“ _Shit_ ,” Riza breathes.

Then the screaming starts.

 

 

“I didn’t think I’d ever say this…” Roy settles gingerly at the long table in the front office. “…but at the moment, I’m glad that you spend an inordinate amount of time in the Hospital Wing.”

Ed accepts another cup of tea, which seems to be the office currency for appreciation. “You’re just lucky there was a random book of healing spells with a whole _chapter_ on puncture wounds nearby when I was sitting up with Al. And that I have a photographic memory. And that I like you.”

Roy’s dramatic pained-but-persevering expression gives way to a soft, warm, slightly soppy smile that feels like a sea of melted chocolate rising inside of Ed until it lifts his heart like a buoy.

Breda pantomimes vomiting.

“You’re all right?” Roy asks, and he raises one of those un-fucking-believable hands and grazes his fingertips over Ed’s cheek. Ed tries to calm the flare of _Don’t let anybody see it!_ adrenaline by force of will and might of reason—it’s still crazy-weird that it’s _okay_ now, and they don’t have to bury all the secrets anymore. Ed’s had about enough of secrets. This feels too good to be true.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m fine. I mean, it was your balls Hughes wanted to break; he didn’t even touch me. Which isn’t fair at all, but…”

“It’s not irrational,” Roy says quietly. “Considering all of the myriad factors making us… atypical, it’s not unreasonable of him to assume I pressured you, and that this wasn’t equitable in the least. I don’t blame him for trying to protect you.”

The whole concept kind of makes Ed want to do what Breda was just miming. “But—”

“I’ll talk to him,” Roy says. “He genuinely wants what’s best for both of us; he just has doubts that this is it.” Roy lowers his voice a little more, and his eye is gently insistent where it’s glued to Ed’s. “But you’re all right. After that, and also… after—last night.”

Oh. That.

To tell the truth, everything is kind of sore, and Ed’s got faint muscle cramps in places he didn’t know cramps could go, and there’s a lot of aching and tender spots which are not making it pleasanter to sit in an office chair.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he says.

Roy smiles hesitantly, smoothing Ed’s hair back from his face. “I know… that the first time… tends to be a bit… difficult. If there’s anything I can—”

“Sir?” Kain says. “We’ve got a—oh, my _God_ , what _is_ this?”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Roy sighs, slinging himself up to his feet and crossing to Kain’s desk. “Where—”

“Hang on,” Kain says, jerking open one of the drawers on the left and squinting at the vast map blanketing his whole desktop. “Edinburgh, Edinburgh, E-D-I—” He digs through the stack of sheets in the drawer, snatches one out, and unfolds it on the desktop, laying it over the larger one.

“Allow me,” Roy says, drawing his wand and flicking it at the new map. “ _Effingo muneris_.”

Ed scrambles over just in time to see the lines of the small map light up and then dim until all that remains is a blinking red dot on High Street.

“What’s red, again?” Breda asks.

“Red is ‘uncategorizable’,” Falman says. “Which, for the record, is not a word.”

“It means that we’re detecting dangerous magic,” Roy says to Ed, “but we’re not sure how it manifests.”

Riza checks her sidearm. Ed remembers the mummifying amount of red tape she and Roy had to tear through to get her the permits to carry it in inside the Ministry. He also remembers the day Roy met up with him, knees still a little jellied, and told him about the first time it saved all of their lives.

“It means,” Riza says, “that we’re going to go find out.”

The door opens, and Jean slips in. “Ooh! Uncatgrizorible?”

“Heymans, Vato, and Jean,” Roy says, “hold down the fort. Kain—closest network hearth to the target?”

“High Street and Blackfriars,” Kain says, briskly folding the map again. “Just a few blocks down.”

Roy selects a vial of Floo powder waiting on the mantle in a test tube rack full of similar specimens, uncaps it, and tosses it into the fireplace. “High Street and Blackfriars,” he says. He glances back, mouth tight, green flame dancing in his eye. “Ed, follow me close. And be careful—please.”

“Always,” Ed says, which, weirdly, doesn’t seem to reassure anyone on the premises.

The hearth erupts into emerald, and Roy steps into the flames.  “Intersection of High Street and Blackfriars Street, Edinburgh, Scotland.”

Is it weird that just his voice kind of gives Ed the shivers?  It’s just—silky and commanding at the same time.  And that’s the best thing about Roy, is that he’s so _many_ things; he adapts like a chameleon so naturally that he always knows what to do or say or how to act.  He’s got an uncanny knack for setting things right.

“Go ahead, Edward,” Riza says, and he jerks out of the reverie.  Hopefully he wasn’t mooning too long; Breda’s never gonna let him live this down.

He clears his throat, steps forward into the tingling green fire, and tries to focus on a place he’s never seen as he invokes the words.  You can’t fuck around with Floo powder, and Al would _kill_ him if he got himself lost in the ether somewhere.

As his vision blurs, his guts flip, and his whole body stages an avid revolt complete with angry picket signs and burning effigies, Ed remembers why, nine times out of ten, he’d rather walk across Wales than than travel by Floo.

His eyes focus on his hands, splayed out on some uneven floorboards to prop him up on his palms and his knees.  His head keeps spinning; through the loopy rotations, he can just barely make out the feign-veins in his right hand glowing unevenly.

“Oh, my God,” Roy’s voice says, and there’s a faint pressure on his shoulder.  “Ed, I—are you—”

“Just gimme a sec,” Ed says, striving valiantly to keep the contents of his stomach where they belong.  Roy _made_ him that breakfast; he’s not about to barf it up on the ground without a fight.

Tentative footsteps stop nearby.  “I knew we should’ve Apparated,” Kain says.  “Are you okay, Ed?”

That Ed does not say _Do I fucking look okay_ is pretty heroic, all things considered, because Kain would take it personally, and that’s no good.

“Been better,” he manages instead.

“Kain and I will do a sweep,” Riza says.  “We’ll start in from the south side—come from the north when you’re ready and meet us in the middle.  Whatever it was seemed to be heading uphill.”

“To the castle,” Roy says.

“Most likely.”

“Move out, Riza—thank you.”

Her heels click.  How does she even _do_ that?  Ed’d just fall over.  “Sir.”

As two pairs of feet stride sharply away, Roy touches Ed’s right arm—which is protesting in every way it knows short of shooting sparks.

“Shit,” Roy says, and _helpless_ is new on him, and kind of scary. “Did I break it? I broke it. I made you break it. Ed, I’m so sorry; I had no idea—you ought to have _said_ something—why do you never—?”

“It’s not broken,” Ed says, carefully sitting up. His head lurches, but he can more or less see now, so that’s a plus. “Don’t tell Winry you said that, either, or she’ll beat you just for _thinking_ that it’s fragile.”

He flexes his fingers, and, sure enough, everything’s in working order. …well, the mechanical stuff is, anyway.

“’S probably my own fault,” he says to the nervously hovering presence that is Roy. “It’s usually not this intense—I must’ve lost my concentration, or gotten tongue-tied or something.”

“Ed,” Roy says slowly, “it’s not… Sometimes bad things happen without provocation. It doesn’t always have to be your _fault_ when something goes wrong.”

“Maybe,” Ed says, watching the little spears of light that ripple under his rubber skin as he works his knuckles. “But once you start down that road, you start to realize that an indifferent universe is actually worse than a hateful one, and then you can’t sleep for weeks. Because if there’s some kind of standard for responsibility and cause and effect, okay, yeah, you get punished when you fuck up, and it sucks. But that means you can control the direction of your own existence. If the universe is _arbitrary_ —that’s the real meaning of ‘unfair’. And if there’s no accountability, there ain’t jackshit you can do about anything. You’re just teetering on the edge of a void. So I’d rather think there’s some kind of reason controlling the chaos. I guess that’s the easy way out.”

He levers himself up to his feet, and he only stumbles a _little_ , but Roy grasps his shoulder like they’re both going to fall.

“Anyway,” Ed says, trying not to let on how gooey his kneecaps feel, “where the fuck is this thing we’re supposed to be tracking down?”

Gently, Roy takes his elbow, and something that simple shouldn’t feel so goddamn fantastic.

“It’s all uphill from here,” Roy says.

…mostly goddamn fantastic.

Roy’s arm snakes around Ed’s waist as they hike up High Street, Ed laboring all the while to keep his guts from staging a bilious coup.

“Okay,” Ed says, breathing carefully as his body finally starts to settle.  Fucking _Floo_.  “So if you had to bet money, what are we looking for?”

Roy smiles faintly.  It’s a giant pain in the ass how freakin’ fine he is, eyepatch and all.  It’s _literally_ caused a pain in Ed’s ass, at this point.  “Difficult to say.  Sometimes the detection system fails to identify a disturbance accurately, so it could actually be a backfire, or an illegal item surfacing, or a an unusual instance of underage use.  Overlapping categories tend to confuse the system and make it default to ‘uncategorizable’ as well—Kain’s trying to work on that.”

Ed turns that over for a second.  “What color was mine?”

Roy’s smile goes narrow and slightly wry.  “Kain hadn’t developed the colors back then—he hadn’t even been brought on yet. At that point, it was a lot of very imprecise circles designed by a nearsighted wizard who hated his job slightly more than he hated every other aspect of the entire world. As I understand it, the circle around your house sort of… pulsed. I never saw it before I set out; I had the assignment in my hand before I stepped out of St. Mungo’s, and I went directly to the train station.”

“Good first day on the job?” Ed asks.

Roy’s laugh is hard to earn, which makes it all the more amazing when you manage it.

“In the end, though,” Roy says, “everything worked out for the best.” He squeezes Ed’s waist gently at that, and _boy_ , it’s going to be tough to track down a difficult-to-say when Ed’s heart’s a balloon floating off into the pale blue Edinburgh sky.

“That’s my perception of the universe,” Roy says.  “There isn’t a grand plan to be found anywhere, but fifty-one percent of the time, the balance favors good.”

In the distance, there’s a resonating roar.

Roy pauses.  “I daresay they found it,” he says.

“Whatever _it_ is,” Ed says.

“Precisely,” Roy says, wrapping his arm tighter around Ed’s waist.  “Off we go.”

Fortunately—maybe-fortunately—the rush of adrenaline seems to have chased the last of the Floo malaise straight out of his system, and Ed feels like a new man.

“Let’s do it,” he says, and grabbing Roy’s hand tightly, shamelessly, in _public_ , is even more exhilarating still.

Running up the hill dulls the thrill somewhat, but it sharpens again in a grand hurry when Ed sees the giant clay-mud-monstrous _thing_ looming high over Riza and Kain, just outside the wall to the courtyard of Edinburgh Castle.

“Oh,” Roy says.  “Lovely.  A golem.”

“Cute,” Ed says.

None too surprisingly, they both move _towards_ the huge, violent-looking, roary thing in unpracticed unison. As they draw closer, Ed hears Kain rattling off a litany of spells that _should_ be compromising the composition of the golem’s deeply-fissured shell. The only problem is that nothing’s happening.

“Hmm,” Roy says.

This job must be more exciting than Ed always figured if Prissy-Pants Mustang isn’t even _bothered_ yet.

Riza mutters something and taps her wand on the barrel of her gun. She slips the wand back into her belt, aims, and fires a bullet that looks like it’s made of cobalt-blue fire.

The whole thing slams into the golem’s broad clay forehead, which… just… swallows it. The golem doesn’t even blink, although Ed’s honestly not sure that its hollowed-out eye-socket-things are capable of blinking, so that might not be a particularly helpful method of judgment.

“Sir,” Riza says in a very calm voice, “I underestimated the amount of time necessary for containment. The wards will be weakening momentarily.”

“Ah,” Roy says in an equally calm voice. “Fall back and reinforce them. Edward and I can take it from here.”

Damn. This thing looks even bigger up close.

…not that that’s to say Ed himself is _less than large_ or anything; the golem is just _freakishly gigantic_ , is all.

…freakishly gigantic and about as enraged as something dubiously-animate can get.

Riza and Kain drop back to go shore up the Muggle-proof perimeter around this city block. Ed hopes it’s soundproof, too, because the golem is howling away like there’s no tomorrow… which is not the most encouraging idiom just now.

“I knew I should have brought Falman,” Roy says thoughtfully, rolling up his sleeves as the golem charges towards them, and Ed wonders when exactly the whole damn world went mad.

“There should be a paper in its mouth,” Ed says.  “With one of the names of God on it, whatever that means.  And if you take that out, it crumbles on the spot.”

Roy fires off a beautiful defensive shield spell—his diction is impressive, and his _form_ is fucking majestic; back straight, hips angled slightly towards the target, wrist sharp, eye sharper; he’s like a combination how-to guide and softcore porno—and then turns to stare at Ed a bit.

“What?” Ed asks, trying not to let the bubble of _want_ in his throat obstruct his voice.  “Falman’s not the only one who knows all kinds of useless stuff.”

Roy hesitates—it’s just a faint, almost imperceptible, split-second freezing of his features—and Ed knows that they’re both thinking the same thing.  Falman knows about golems because he knows goddamn everything; his brain’s a giant sponge.  Ed knows about golems because he’s the unofficial expert on breathing life into shit you shouldn’t.

He always skimmed those chapters in the books he wasn’t even supposed to know about, let alone be poring over at the age of ten.  It’s kind of too bad he didn’t pay more attention.

“So let’s find out what God’s called when he’s at home,” he says.

Roy slings out another crackle of lightning that sears up along the inside curve of his shield.  The unperturbed golem duly begins banging on the other side with both tremendous fists.

“Somehow,” Roy says, “that sounds profoundly ominous.”

“Meh,” Ed says.

It’s about then that the golem grows a brain and starts shuffling around towards the side of the shield, pawing at the pearly edge as it goes.

“You think clay can bite off fingers?” Ed asks.

“Edward,” Roy says slowly, “don’t you _da_ —”

“Better question,” Ed says.  “You think clay can bite off _metal_ fingers?”

“Ed, _no_ —”

Ah, fuck better judgment with a spiked mace anyway.

Ed dodges Roy’s grasping hand and darts around the edge of the shield.  Damn if the indescribably large golem doesn’t somehow look even indescribably _larger_ up close—it turns, slowly, empty-eyed and with its thick limbs swinging.  The jaw looks kind of… wrong—unhinged, maybe, but not quite enough for it to hang open.  There are about a dozen broad, blocky teeth jammed in there, and Ed can just see a slip of half-curled parchment bouncing behind them.

Oh.  It’s bouncing because the golem’s barreling right at him.

Ed handsprings backwards—not because he’s showy so much as because he’d rather point his boots than his face at an oncoming golem—and yanks his wand out of his belt before his feet have quite gained purchase on the cobblestones.  He brings it around as he skids to a stop and racks his brains a bit: how best to provoke a golem into opening wide _while_ you’re close enough to reach in, _without_ getting eaten in the process…?

There’s not a whole lot of time to contemplate the question—he flicks out a brisk air disruption strong enough to unbalance even the golem’s bulk; dust and gravel quiver everywhere, and that buys him a couple seconds to try zinging a jet of water right at the place the golem’s fingers are joined to its hand. Kain’s magic was sound, though—it’s not that he didn’t try enough spells; the clay’s enchanted to be practically indestructible.

Water gives Ed an idea, though, and he pauses a second to let the golem lumber closer. Roy shouts something he can’t hear over the rapid-fire beat of his heart in his ears and the constant growl the golem’s making—this time, when Ed raises his left arm, he points his wand directly at the golem’s oversized teeth and channels all the nearby condensation he can gather. Does melting the paper count as removing—?

…shit. Apparently not.

… _shit_. Now Ed has to extract _wet_ paper from between the golem’s teeth.

“Ed!” Roy cries.

“Just a sec!” Ed says. He hops back one step, two steps—drops into a crouch—meets the golem’s non-eyes and _waits_.

It swipes at him with one big, crusty, cracked hand, and he ducks; it swings with the other, and he dodges back and then jumps forward, steeling himself and reaching out and grabbing on and climbing its extended arm right up to its back. The jagged edges of the broken clay make for stable handholds, and some deft scrambling lets him plant one boot on its left shoulder, and he’s _almost_ got the other steadied on the right—

The golem twists violently, roaring again, and both arms lurch up towards him; the thing’s fingers are thicker than his wrists—

A blinding flash and a smoky sizzle—pale blue spell-lightning sparks in the little canyons that run down the golem’s chest, and Roy is _mesmerizing_ with his jaw set and his eye cold and his arm out, standing tall and defiant and so damned _powerful_ —

The golem staggers, and the teetering momentum breaks Ed’s grip, and his boot goes sliding. Heart hammering, breath stuck, wand gone—dropped?—he loops his right arm around the golem’s neck and tries not to cringe at the jolt of pain and the mechanic whine as the metal takes his whole weight—

“ _Ed_!” Kain calls, which is really not that helpful right now when Ed doesn’t even have time to look.

The fabric of his sleeve shreds as he fights to lever himself up, grinding the metal of his arm against the impossibly hard clay—jeez, Winry’s going to _shank_ him—

The golem reaches for him again, too-big fingers closing in on his _face_ , and that’s just so fucking unsettling he can barely squirm away as he scrabbles for purchase with every available limb. But then there’s a poison-green streak through the air—right past the golem’s head, hissing within a hair’s breadth of its crudely-formed ear. Then another, purple, on the other side; and red, directly into an eye socket; and an insidious black that slams into its torso with sufficient force to send it stumbling backwards. The golem rights itself and spins in a bewildered circle, and out of the corner of his eye, Ed sees Riza circling faster, pistol poised, staying just a step or two ahead.

A distraction like that isn’t going to last long—Ed manages to hike his leg back up onto one of its shoulders without splitting his trousers right down the middle of his ass, and he fights in a deep breath.

“Mustang!” he says. “Bring it _down_!”

The thing is, Roy knows everything about him. Roy knows how deep the rot inside him runs; Roy knows what he’s done and where he’s been and what he’s capable of. Roy knows that he’s tainted for good and tarnished forever. Roy knows he wears the proof. And Roy should not, should _never_ , trust him.

So when the thick black cords come pouring out of Roy’s wand to cinch around the golem’s legs without a _moment’s_ hesitation, Ed kind of wants to break down crying. Because he gets it now. That’s what love is, when you peel all the poetry away. It’s really just trust when someone ought to know better.

The golem topples, and Ed rides it all the way down—the collision when it hits the ground almost jars his teeth right out of his skull, but Pomfrey could probably put those back if she had to anyway.

He hops off despite ringing ears and carouselling head and starts to haul on the golem’s arm to lift its face from the cobblestones; he needs to—

Kain’s beside him, then, and heaving hard to help out, and then Riza’s cast some kind of lightening spell, and then Roy’s pushing his shoulder into the golem’s chest even though it could decapitate him in an _instant_ when he’s in range of its hands like that. Losing _Roy_ would—would just—

Can’t think about it; no time.

Ed shoves his right hand directly into the golem’s mouth. Its broad teeth immediately close around his forearm; the metal starts creaking, and his fingers don’t seem to be responding quite as well as—

He braces one foot on the ground and one on its forehead, _forces_ his hand to curl around the soggy wad of parchment on its tongue, and pulls with everything that he’s got left.

When he opens his eyes, he’s sprawled on the cobblestones with a fistful of paper mush. Roy’s kind of cradling him, and Kain’s collapsed nearby and panting, and Riza’s nudging a chunk of crumbled clay with the toe of her boot.

“Jesus, Ed,” Roy says, grip tightening. “Do you _enjoy_ concussions?” There’s a softness in his eye that belies the sharpness of his voice. “Edward—Ed, say something.”

“That rope spell,” Ed says. “Can we use that in bed?”

Roy stares at him.

“Totally serious,” Ed says.

So maybe this time Roy’s laughter is a little bit hysterical. Ed thinks it still counts.

 

 

Hughes is in the living room, reading _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_ to Elicia and doing all the voices (including his own, for frequent tangential commentary on which details are ‘only _fictional_ magic, Princess, not the kind Mommy and Daddy do’), and Ed could pretty much barf from the sheer domesticity.

Then again, Gracia’s taking a pie out of the oven, so maybe the barfing can wait.

“Baking with magic just isn’t the same,” she says. “Don’t tell Maes I said that; he has a treatise on how spell-based convection is more efficient. Are you sure I can’t get you anything else, dears?”

“You’ve already been much too kind,” Al says while Ed just nods emphatically. He’s got a mouth full of madeleines and a mug full of tea; how could he possibly ask for _more_?

On second thought, the pie smells like absolute bliss, so Ed supposes he can ask for a slice of it. But _then_ he’ll be done forever. Tragically, the pie is probably too hot to eat right now without instantaneously burning the crap out of his tastebuds, which would compromise later consumption.

Al eyes him trying (and failing) not to drool in his tea. “Dessert is for _after_ dinner, Brother.”

“I’m just admiring it,” Ed says.

Al raises an eyebrow and tries to cover his smile with the rim of his mug. “Take a picture; it’ll last longer.”

Hughes swings around the doorway with a zoom lens raised. Ed didn’t even hear him _move_. “Did somebody say ‘picture’?”

“Way to go, Al,” Ed grits out through his forced photo grin.

“Shut up and enjoy your second birthday party, Brother,” Al grits back.

Once the flash-blindness has faded a little bit, he does. He really _does_. Even though nobody’s shown up by half-six.

“Where the he…” He catches sight of Al’s laser-glare and remembers that Elicia’s in earshot. “—ck— _heck_ —is everybody?”

“Fashionably late, I imagine,” Hughes says. He beams at Gracia. “Clearly it’s been too long since we had a shindig, dear—anyone who remembers your cooking would show up hours before.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Gracia says calmly. “It will also get you a second serving of pie.”

Hughes punches the air.

The doorbell rings, and Elicia squeals and starts galloping down the hall, which sends Hughes careening after her. He scoops her up and lets her open the door, and in the widening strip of light—

If Ed’s heart doesn’t quit trying to squeeze itself to pieces every time he sees Roy, he’s going to have some interesting stories to tell to cardiologists pretty soon.

Roy’s holding a wine bottle out to Hughes, tipping a bouquet towards Gracia, and handing Elicia a small cardboard box. She gazes at him with massive eyes, flings the top off, and draws out…

Tiny silver slippers.

“They’re only red in the film,” Al murmurs to Ed.

“I know _that_ ,” Ed says, and he does, because Mum read them aloud when he and Al were kids, and he clings to those little wisps of memories like they’re the last lines mooring him to port.

Roy bends to collect the abandoned box while Elicia chatters deafeningly in her father’s ear. The smile on his face makes Ed’s skin tingle, and the way the hall light races down the curve of his back makes Ed’s stomach clench. Maybe he can talk Roy into throwing him a third birthday party, and they can spend the entirety of it in their birthday _suits_.

Aw, shit. Ed takes a couple huge swigs of tea to hide the way his cheeks are heating up.

As Roy straightens, he looks around at the rather empty apartment, blinking.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to come early.”

“There are medications for that,” Al says.

Ed promptly spits tea _everywhere_.

 

 

“So,” Roy says a few hours later, when they’re curled up on the couch together, and Al’s showing Elicia how to make lanyards, and Gracia’s obliterating Jean and Breda at rummy while Hughes stands behind her chair and massages her shoulders. Kain and Winry are engaged in an extremely animated discussion of radios, and Falman and Sheska are engaged in an extremely invested discussion of encyclopedias, and Paninya and Russell are either playing chess or trying to incinerate each other with their eyes. “How would you rate this consolatory second birthday party so far?”

“Can’t talk,” Ed says. “Too full.”

“Perhaps—and this is only a suggestion, mind— _perhaps_ you might consider stopping at two and a half pieces of pie next time.”

“Blasphemy,” Ed says.

Roy kisses his temple lightly, and Ed instantly and involuntarily forgives him.

“Am I going to have to carry you home?” Roy asks.

“Depends,” Ed says, snuggling in under his arm a little more. There is nothing— _nothing_ —like cuddling close enough to press his ear to Roy’s chest and just sitting there, listening to his heartbeat. “You gonna carry me to _your_ home?”

Roy nuzzles at his ear. “Mmm… could do. Could call in sick tomorrow.” He nuzzles a little harder. “Could call in sick for a week.”

“I invite you to try, sir,” Riza says from _the opposite side of the room_.

Once Ed thinks he can breathe again, he mutters, “We should bribe her with guns.”

“We could bribe her with free labor,” Roy says. “Everyone was very impressed with how our intern handled that golem, you know.”

“I totally fucked it up,” Ed says, attempting to embed his face in Roy’s shirt so he never has to move. “Winry almost blew a fuse. Got clay all in the things and the stuff.”

“Unconscionable,” Roy murmurs.

“Shut it,” Ed says.

Except then Roy starts stroking his hair, so Ed forgives him _again_.

Smooth bastard.

“We still dunno who _made_ the golem, though,” Ed manages after a moment of inarticulable contentment.

“True,” Roy says, “but we handled the misused magic. The rest is Maes’s division.”

“Hnn,” Ed says. It’s probably going to nag at him for ages… but not just now. Just now, Roy’s petting his hair, and nothing in the world is bothersome.

“Are you likely to fall asleep?” Roy asks. “Maybe this isn’t the best time to give you your present.”

Ed blinks up at him. Sly smile, eyepatch, and glimmer of amusement—Roy’s too _much_ , sometimes; he’s exactly the right amount to _want_ , and crave, and pine for, but he’s too much to _have_. Too much to hold onto, probably, when all you are is half of a dumb kid and a couple scraps of well-engineered metal.

“It’s not a sex toy, is it?” he asks.

Roy’s visible cheek goes faintly pink. “At risk of ruining the surprise—it is not.”

“S’good,” Ed says. “Might be awkward.”

“Perhaps next year,” Roy says. “But only if you’re very good.”

He hesitates for just a moment, and then Ed has to un-snuggle a little bit to let him reach into his pocket and retrieve a small velvet pouch.

“Happy birthday, Edward,” he says softly.

Ed’s hands somehow simultaneously feel like they’re made of brick and like they’re floating. He takes the little bag; it’s heavier than he expected. Carefully he tilts it until something gold and gleaming slides out—a pin, solid and old-fashioned, to secure to a lapel or to fasten to the twist of a scarf. In the palm of his hand, the light gleams off of an elegant gold phoenix wreathed in flame.

“Here,” Roy says, reaching in, deft-fingered—he pops a subtle catch on the side, and the phoenix swings open. In the hollow underneath, there’s a tiny red stone.

“Shit,” Ed breathes. “Roy, did you—did you _make_ this?”

“Why do you think it’s so late?” Roy asks. He smiles, keeping his thumb just a centimeter from the stone. “It’s a Portkey.”

Something is buzzing. Ed thinks it’s his recently-broken brain. “Wh—?”

“It will take you to my entryway,” Roy says. “If you ever need me, or just need shelter—for anything, for any reason…”

Ed has trouble answering for a minute, because he seems to be having a very delayed allergic reaction to the pie, which is making his throat swell up.

“But, um.” He clears the last of the coincidental stickiness. “What h-happens when you use a Portkey twice?”

Roy’s eyebrow draws in towards the edge of the patch. “How do you mean?”

“Usually they’re not wearable,” Ed says. “But this’d go with me, right? So what happens if I use it to get to your house, then touch it again when I’m already there?”

Roy opens his mouth.

Roy closes his mouth.

Roy smiles, slowly.

“I suppose we’ll just have to find out,” he says.

“For _science_ ,” Ed says.

“For science,” Roy replies.

And Ed can tell, somehow, that he really means _For you_.


End file.
